Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

So I am now allowed to make some observations. But before I do, I would like to make sure I have my facts straight. I pretty much just skimmed earlier posts. The following is what I understand to be the simplified version of the events in approximately chronological order. Kindly let me know if I have gotten anything wrong or left out something important.

1. A two plus twoer comes second in a tournament at AP and is supicious of how the winner played his hands.

2. He asks for hand histories and AP provides them.

3. For the most part this tournament winner can be seen to be playing his hands almost perfectly GIVEN he knew most or all of his opponent's hands, but TERRIBLY if he didn't.

4. The information provided by AP included stuff that is not supposed to be given out. This extra information was even more incriminating than the normally given out information would have been. It included the fact that there was someone who was observing the winner for a long time. And that this observer was known to once be a part owner of AP.

5. AP has now claimed that the observer went from being an owner to a consultant.

6. The play of the winner made it so outlandishly obvious that he could see cards that one would think that he was hoping to get caught. Perhaps to discredit AP, perhaps for other reasons. If that wasn't the case, the guy had to be either an idiot or high on something. Because if he was just a poker cheat, he stood to win millions if he was less obvious about knowing the hole cards.

7. The information was disseminated to other two plus twoers and AP was confronted with the ridiculously obvious hand histories. But NOT the evidence about the observer.

8. AP replied that in spite of the suspicious hand histories, they were sure that no one could see the hole cards. They based this view on the fact that their engineers said it was physically impossible.

9. It is not known whether AP showed their engineers the hand histories, allowing them to apply Baye's Theorem before offering their opinion.

10. When the observer evidence became known, AP claimed that they investigated further and did indeed find the software glitch that allowed someone to see the hole cards. They claimed to have corrected that glitch.(Physically speaking. Not through the use of observing hand play.) And they reimbursed people for the incident and others they claimed to have uncovered. Many two plus twoers think that AP already knew that there was the glitch but wouldn't admit it until the observer evidence was made public.

11. We still do not know why someone sent out hand histories with extra incriminating evidence.

12. We still do not know why the cheater made things so obvious

13. We do not know the nature of the software tinkering that allowed someone to see the hole cards. Or whether something similar is scientifically possible on other sites.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Gildwulf

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Gildwulf

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

tl;dr

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

RICKROLL

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

please don't clutter these threads with that garbage. kthx

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

THANK GOD SKLANSKY FINALLY CHIMED IN. WE WERE ALL WONDERING WHERE HE HAS BEEN THROUGH ALL OF THIS. AMIRITE?

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

the thing that bothers me about the absolute thing the most is thinking about the possibility that there are superuser/observer accounts on other sites and if there are I wonder how tightly they're really regulated

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

if some random posted this, they'd get banned. i skimmed through the post, ure points seem close enough to acurate for whatever opinions ure about to give.


lets see them

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

David,

The last thing that I heard was that AJ Green was cheating via a backend access tool called Servman.

gTg

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

no mention of seif?

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
4. The information provided by AP included stuff that is not supposed to be given out. This extra information was even more incriminating than the normally given out information would have been. It included the fact that there was someone who was observing the winner for a long time. And that this observer was known to once be a part owner of AP.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since you didn't note this anywhere, the extra information also included hole cards of all players, which is what allowed everyone to determine that the winner was quite obviously cheating.

Answer to #12 is likely "retardation."

Answer to #13 is more of a technical issue than a scientific one. Scientifically it's absolutely possible, you just program something that's like "if superuser send all cards" and bam, there you go. Properly guarded, in fact, it's perfectly harmless for sites to have accounts that can see hole cards of players, as long as they are used exclusively in a testing environment and can't play for real money etc etc /precautions. I'd imagine (based solely on my experience as a computer programmer) that other sites probably do have this capability; for unregulated offshore companies, why would they do extra work to remove this functionality from their software once testing is complete? We've all dealt with FTP support, we know that as a company they're prob gonna cut corners with stuff like this whenever possible. The problem is when sites get lax with protecting stuff like this from getting into the hands of employees that are like "lol $$$" and do stupid crap like what the AP employees did.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
THANK GOD SKLANSKY FINALLY CHIMED IN. WE WERE ALL WONDERING WHERE HE HAS BEEN THROUGH ALL OF THIS. AMIRITE?

[/ QUOTE ]THE ENTIRE SCANDAL HAS BEEN MEANINGLESS UNTIL NOW. I CAN'T WAIT FOR SKLANSKY'S INSIGHT, AND I ALSO AM POSITIVE THAT WHAT HE SAYS WILL NOT HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAID HUNDREDS OF TIMES BEFORE!!

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
6. The play of the winner made it so outlandishly obvious that he could see cards that one would think that he was hoping to get caught. Perhaps to discredit AP, perhaps for other reasons. If that wasn't the case, the guy had to be either an idiot or high on something. Because if he was just a poker cheat, he stood to win millions if he was less obvious about knowing the hole cards.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think he was an idiot. I don't think he made it obvious on purpose to damage AP... even the most vindictive person would be hard-pressed to turn away millions (if he cheats "properly") for the sake of getting back at a former employer.

I think this guy was just a dumbass who came across too powerful of a weapon and just didn't know how to use intelligently.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

In before lock.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

David, in response to this post... who cares.

Say something or say nothing at all

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

it's new info cuz David Sklansky types it imo

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
no mention of seif?

[/ QUOTE ]

Fill me in. Barely know who he is. Anything else I need to know? Am I correct that the hand histories allowed for no other explanation? Even multi player collusion?

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

Nice to see you've kept up with this controversy, David.

Very nice

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
no mention of seif?

[/ QUOTE ]

Fill me in. Barely know who he is. Anything else I need to know? Am I correct that the hand histories allowed for no other explanation? Even multi player collusion?

[/ QUOTE ]

David,

Mark Seif was involved in an incident on 02/15/06 with stuckinpgh in which it appeared that he could see hole cards.

http://www.internettexasholdem.com/phpbb...as-vt34808.html

Edit: Fixed link.
gTg

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

#11.

A 2+2er with a friend on the inside said that his friend says that the person who sent out the HHs was a new employee and most likely sent out the HH with all the hole cards on accident. There was a post on BBV like 5-7 days ago with this info in it.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
#11.

A 2+2er with a friend on the inside said that his friend says that the person who sent out the HHs was a new employee and most likely sent out the HH with all the hole cards on accident. There was a post on BBV like 5-7 days ago with this info in it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow that's pretty big.

So in order for this to have been exposed:

a) the superuser had to be extremely blatant in utilizing hole card info.

b) newbie absolute staff had to make errors

Pretty scary.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

David- to help get the timeline down a bit more precisely...

The accusations and some evidence that there was cheating going on precedes the hand history being unearthed/scrutinized by Marco, Waco, Nat, Snags, etc.
Marco may have requested it shortly after the tourney- but nobody had any idea of what it contained until weeks later- long after the threads that involved the poker tracker shots of other sessions with unreal river aggression factors and win rates were burning up BBV.

The initial accusations about the super using came about after piecing together files from players in the tournaments- along with cash game hand histories from the various cheating accounts against 2+2ers and P5ers.

Absolute went into denial mode despite clear evidence of dumping sessions between the suspect accounts.
They continued to deny possible cheating while Josem put together his plot of how outrageous the poker tracker shots of the sessions looked.
They said it was impossible for any person to know the hole cards to be able to use to their advantage during play.

The Marco file comes to light later when he takes a second look at it weeks after getting it. (IIRC)

Absolute had been denying it prior to that though.

It was also obvious prior to that file coming to light there was cheating going on.

The file simply made it impossible for them to continue to deny it.

Not that they still didn't try.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

Damn, Sklansky got his muzzle off and just ripped this issue apart like a wild rabbid wolf!!!!11

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

http://www.the-isb.com/images/UnifiedBitchTheory2.jpg

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

And yes... Absolute Poker has tried to minimize how tight the "consultant" was with the company.
They floated the "rogue consultant/employee trying to prove a point to upper management" story first when they decided to admit something happened.

Then he magically was moved up to trusted consultant when it was apparent nobody was buying their brand of bs.
And the incident became more than something approaching a prank gone wrong.

At no time have they openly stated the person/s has or had any ownership interest in their company.
Obviously.

The consensus among those who know the most about the story (Nat, etc) is that they have no reason to believe the HH was anything other than a mistake.

Why the person made the cheating so obvious is likely some combo of retardation, drugs, entitlement tilt.
But I wouldn't limit it to just that.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
13. We do not know the nature of the software tinkering that allowed someone to see the hole cards. Or whether something similar is scientifically possible on other sites.

[/ QUOTE ]
There's really no question of whether it's possible. That's just an axiom of networked computing: you have to trust the guy with the root privileges.

You can do two things: minimize the number of persons you have to trust. And make it non-trivial for root to get to the info. But you don't get around a certain level of trust.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

WTF is this thread

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
WTF is this thread

[/ QUOTE ]

I could ask the same thing about you...

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

david's last few points are intriguing... it seems very possible that someone deliberately tried to sabotage AP's business...

Post deleted by Mat Sklansky
 

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

This thread as a whole is terrible and should probably be pretty embarassing for David

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

I eagerly await further spinsinuation and spinnuendo in this theard.


cliffnotes of thread:

--DS: hayyyyyy guys sup! lol at that Absolute Poker stuff amirite?

--thread: Gary Gnu was so [censored] wrong.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
http://www.the-isb.com/images/UnifiedBitchTheory2.jpg

[/ QUOTE ][img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't [censored]":

"Bitches ain't [censored] but hoes and tricks"

This would indicate that the set of Bitches is completely composed of hoes and/or tricks.

Anyway back to the issue at hand. I've been studying this issue extensively and I'm pretty sure the Fundamental theorem of poker has serious implications in proving whether these guys were cheating or not. I'll get back to you when I've got some results.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
David,

The last thing that I heard was that AJ Green was cheating via a backend access tool called Servman.

gTg

[/ QUOTE ]

You are taking a big risk well you call a superhero like Servman a "tool".

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
Mason Took My Muzzle Off

[/ QUOTE ]

I read this, and i can't help but think of Arrested Development, when Michael makes Tobias record his conversations because he keeps making inadvertent sexual innuendo.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

David there are a few innacuracies in your post:

- The IP of the observer belonged to Scott Tom (former owner of AP) while at least one of the cheating accounts belonged to his friend AJ Green. The "consultant" AP is referring to is Green. It is extremely probable both were involved.

- The excel file with the additional hand histories, etc, wasn't uncovered until a lot of other evidence had been gone over, multiple denials from AP, etc.

- The initial denials from AP were reportedly issued by one or more of the cheaters, so whether AP showed data to their "engineers" is moot.

Also:

[ QUOTE ]
6. The play of the winner made it so outlandishly obvious that he could see cards that one would think that he was hoping to get caught. Perhaps to discredit AP, perhaps for other reasons. If that wasn't the case, the guy had to be either an idiot or high on something. Because if he was just a poker cheat, he stood to win millions if he was less obvious about knowing the hole cards.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here you are making the assumption that the cheater(s) weren't on a clock. It's possible they knew their exploitation of the security hole would be quickly discovered and/or blocked.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

Needing Sklansky to talk about this = Needing Ja Rule to talk about 9/11

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

David, if you could see everyone's hole cards, how much of your roll would you commit to one game of 100/200 unlimited holdthems?

Many thanks, a nit.

Re: Absolute-Mason Took My Muzzle Off
 

[ QUOTE ]
So I am now allowed to make some observations. But before I do, I would like to make sure I have my facts straight.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sklansky goes on to re-hash everything he and everyone else that has been following this scandal has observed on 2+2. When someone important says the have some observations to make, usually they have something new to add. The only thing he adds here is his voice. So far this is a wasted thread.